Chapter 85: Across the Line

The competitors gathered before sunrise, mist still clinging to the grass around the arena, and the officials explained that today’s trial would be different from the ones before it. Every student would enter individually this time, moving through a course of checkpoints that required crossing difficult terrain, defeating combat targets, and retrieving a marked token before reaching the final line. The twist came last.

Competitors could cross paths and interfere with one another along the way, as long as no one caused serious injury or permanent sabotage.

Liam turned to Roxanne with a delighted grin the moment the rules were announced, bouncing slightly on his heels like a man who had been waiting for this exact news his whole life. "Finally," he said. She narrowed her eyes. "Finally what?" she asked. "A chance to beat you," he said. "Keep dreaming," she said, and he laughed as he jogged off to find his starting position.

Roxanne was placed several spots behind Kai at the starting line. He glanced back at her over his shoulder. "Don’t hold back," he said. She smiled. "I wasn’t planning to." The horn sounded a moment later, and the whole line of competitors vanished into the trees, boots pounding against packed dirt until the sound scattered into a hundred different directions. Roxanne found her rhythm within the first few strides, her breath falling into the pace she had practiced for weeks.

Her first combat section waited at the edge of the forest, where the ground was already churned from earlier runners, and three training opponents converged on her at once. Rather than meeting them head-on, she let their own momentum work against them, remembering every reversal Kai had drilled into her over the past months.

She dropped the first opponent with a sweep, used the second to block the third’s strike, and finished the last one before either could recover, her breathing barely changed by the effort. When she looked up, Kai stood on a platform above the clearing, watching. He gave her a single nod of approval before she took off running again, her legs already carrying her toward the next marker.

Their paths overlapped not long after, and Kai caught up to her along a narrow stretch of forest trail thick with ferns and the smell of crushed pine. Neither of them slowed down.

"Are you following me?" she asked, breathing hard. "You’re in my way," he said. "Then pass me," she said, and he did, surging ahead with an ease that made her grit her teeth and push harder.

What started as competition turned playful almost immediately, the two of them trading glances every time one pulled ahead of the other. They leapt across a series of flat stones in a dry creek bed, scrambled up a steep slope together, and sprinted through a stand of birches so close that their shoulders nearly brushed, laughing between breaths like neither of them had any intention of stopping.

Kai reached the next marker a few seconds before she did. "Show-off," she said, catching her breath. "You challenged me," he said, grinning.

The course turned dangerous without warning a short while later. A section of ground gave way beneath Roxanne’s feet, and she caught the crumbling edge with both hands, her legs swinging over empty air. Kai was already several meters ahead when it happened, and he turned at the sound.

For one second she expected him to come running back. Instead he waited where he stood. "You good?" he called. "Keep going," she said, hauling herself up by her own strength. He held her gaze for a moment longer. "I know," he said, and he turned and kept moving. It mattered more than she expected, because he hadn’t rescued her when she didn’t need rescuing.

She reached the final token almost exactly when Kai did, both of them lunging for the small silver disk set into a stone pedestal. Their hands collided on top of it, and for a moment neither of them moved, breathing hard and standing closer than the course required. "You first," Kai said. Roxanne shook her head. "No." "Why?" he asked. "Because I want to beat you," she said. His mouth curved into something close to a smile. "Then try," he said. She yanked the token free and ran, and his laugh followed her through the trees.

Roxanne crossed the final line first between the two of them, chest heaving, with Kai arriving only seconds behind her, followed shortly by Liam, then Lucien and Roshan together, all of them winded and grinning despite themselves. The scoreboard updated almost immediately. Roxanne Silver, second place. Kai Moonstone, third. Liam stared at the numbers with his mouth open. "Oh, that’s embarrassing," he said. Kai turned to Roxanne. "You beat me," he said. She smiled. "I know," she said. He laughed quietly. "Good," he said, and he meant it.

Liam declared loudly that Roxanne had single-handedly ruined the Moonstone family reputation, clutching his chest as though the scoreboard had wounded him personally, while Roshan pointed out, far more calmly, that she had only beaten Kai by a matter of seconds.

Lucien simply said, "You earned it." Roxanne looked at him. "You’re not going to tell me I got lucky?" she asked. "No," he said, and he paused before finishing. "You prepared." It meant more to her than any grand compliment could have.

Just when everyone expected the Lunar Trials to be finished, the officials called the top competitors back to the arena. The rankings, they explained, were not the end of the assessment.

The top twelve competitors would form a single expedition the following day, and the announcer’s voice carried clearly across the gathered crowd. "The top twelve competitors will form a single expedition," he said. Roxanne scanned the list as it appeared on the board, her pulse quick, and found her own name among them, alongside Lucien, Roshan, Liam, Kai, and Elias.

Then the official added one more line. "This expedition will take place beyond the marked Lunar Trial territory." A ripple of unease moved through the crowd, quieter than the cheering that had come before, as students glanced toward one another and toward the dark treeline at the edge of the valley.

Roxanne turned toward the distant mountains rising beyond the trees, the same mountains where she had heard that strange, distant howl drifting through the dark more than once over the past few days. She wasn’t the only one looking. Beside her, Kai had turned toward the same ridge, his jaw set and his eyes fixed on the far horizon.